Congressional oversight committee to subpoena ICE, USCIS directors over efforts to deport sick children undergoing treatment at U.S. hospitals

A congressional committee plans to subpoena immigration officials to determine why the federal government tried to order foreigners undergoing medical treatment for severe, complex illnesses to leave the country, Rep. Elijah Cummings wrote in a memo Thursday.

Cummings, a Maryland Democrat and chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, issued the memo announcing he will subpoena Ken Cuccinelli, acting director for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Matthew T. Albence, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to testify at an Oct. 17 hearing before the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

An ICE spokesman declined to comment, stating the agency would issue a response to the committee through official government correspondence rather than to the media.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, a Boston Democrat who serves on the committee, said Wednesday lawmakers were pressing immigration officials for answers on what led to the short-lived policy change that effectively told patients they had to leave the country within 33 days or else end up in deportation proceedings.

“The American people deserve to know where this position came from," she said Wednesday during a roundtable with attorneys and patients who have deferred action for medical reasons. "Your clients and my constituents deserve accountability and justice.”

Patients across the country, including a couple dozen in Boston, were caught off guard in mid-August by letters announcing that USCIS would no longer process requests for deferred action due to severe medical conditions, a practice that dates back decades.

MassLive first reported in August that the letters simply told the recipients they had 33 days to leave the country lest they are placed in deportation proceedings. The letters did not explain the policy change or what recourse the patients had to re-submit requests.

USCIS later said that form of deferred action for foreign-born medical patients is not over, but that ICE would continue to process those requests as part of a “procedural shift.”

The deferred action recipients, many of them sick children and their parents, included patients undergoing treatment for cystic fibrosis, cancer and rare genetic disorders, according to a lawsuit later filed challenging the policy change.

One patient, 16-year-old Jonathan Sanchez, said leaving Boston Children’s Hospital and returning to his native Honduras would be a death sentence.

“I started crying and told my mom, ‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. If I go back to Honduras, I will die,’” he told lawmakers during an oversight hearing in September. “After this, I feel so tired both emotionally and mentally.”

The decision sparked a congressional oversight hearing and protests from doctors in Boston.

Attorneys representing the clients expressed concerns that they had not heard from USCIS since that announcement about how they would process the requests. Earlier statements from USCIS suggested the agency would use criteria under the Department of State to determine eligibility for deferred action on the basis of severe medical conditions, a separate set of standards from a separate agency than USCIS.

None of the attorneys have heard from USCIS about whether their clients, whether they’re renewals or first-time applicants, have been approved for deferred action.

Pressley told reporters Wednesday that lawmakers plan to apply pressure to find out what led USCIS to implement the policy change that she says brought trauma and uncertainty to families already suffering from complex diseases.

“To me, there will not be full justice and restoration for these families until they have received notification, we understand the genesis of this,” Pressley said. “We see what happens in the light of day with this administration. One shudders to think what is happening under the cloak of night.”

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